Art - Cindy Sherman: the person behind the personas. In 1983 Cindy Sherman took a photograph of herself that she called “The Artist in Her Studio”.
Sitting in a chair surrounded by photographic equipment, she appears to be the embodiment of honest cheerfulness in a plain white shirt and scant make-up. But look again and you can see that she is wearing a blonde wig, chosen, presumably, in preference to another that has been discarded on the floor. By her feet sit two clichés of bohemian life, an ashtray full of cigarette butts and a glass of red wine.
This is not portraiture but satire. Cindy Sherman: The original selfie queen. You're never too old for a selfie — or for Instagram.
At least, not if you're Cindy Sherman, the award-winning American photographer known for her unusual self-portraiture. On February 12 she will add another honor to her list when she receives the 2019 Max Beckmann Prize in Frankfurt, which recognizes outstanding performances in the fields of painting, graphic art, sculpture and architecture.
Although Sherman told W Magazine in 2017 that she "actually hates the idea of selfies," the artist, who turned 65 on January 19, appears to have taken to the platform known for self-staging like a fish to the water. After an initial reluctance to engage with social media — telling the New York Times Magazine in 2016 that she found it "so vulgar" — in late 2016 Sherman opened a public profile on Instagram, a platform most popular with teenagers, fashionistas and celebrities. The result is a grid that's entirely on-brand. Cultural commentary Fashion icon and pop culture critic. Why Cindy Sherman’s photos are so mysterious - BBC Culture. An interview with Cindy Sherman.
Cindy Sherman: ‘I enjoy doing the really difficult things that people can’t buy’ Perhaps the most intriguing exhibit in Cindy Sherman’s forthcoming retrospective at the National Portrait Gallery is the first, Cindy Book, a family photo album she began making when she was just six years old.
It comprises 26 snapshots pasted on pages torn out of a school exercise book and placed inside stapled-together plain covers that are now stained and discoloured with age. For all sorts of reasons, it is a good place to start. There is no artifice in the actual photographs. They trace ordinary moments in Sherman’s early life from infancy to adolescence: cute baby pics, family gatherings, snaps of her as a child at the beach and portraits of her as a teenager standing gauchely alongside awkward young men. What is striking is the sense of an almost stereotypical all-American suburban childhood.
In green ink, she has circled herself in each photo and underneath written “That’s me,”. That much was clear from the start. The young Cynthia Sherman’s family dynamic was complex. Why Cindy Sherman Thinks Selfies Are a Cry for Help. For a woman whose career has been built on self-portraits, Cindy Sherman is barely recognizable.
In the flesh, the MacArthur Fellowship–winning photographer looks too friendly, too nice to be the same face that stares out from harshly manipulated self-portraits (whatever you do, don’t call them selfies) depicting scary clowns, aging flappers, royalty from old master paintings, society ladies and even creepy social media influencers. When Nicolas Ghesquière, creative director of Louis Vuitton’s women’s collections, first met Sherman, he was shocked by the disparity. “You are inevitably struck by how pretty and sweet she is,” he says.
“No pretense, no weirdness, just a wonderful, emotionally available, direct and frank person. You have to remind yourself that you are in the presence of one of the most exciting and fascinating artists working today.” Home - Cindy Sherman - Photographer, Model, Director, Actor, Avant-Garde Images, Doll Parts and Prosthetics, Movies. The Ugly Beauty of Cindy Sherman’s Instagram Selfies. Mimicry in nature was first observed in butterflies, in the 19th century.
Certain breeds pose as wasps; others bear marks falsely advertising that they are poisonous. Desire for survival alone couldn’t account for the freakishness of camouflage. The novelist Vladimir Nabokov reported on butterflies so creatively exuberant that when masquerading as leaves, they imitated the small holes chewed by grubs. What predator could appreciate such subtlety? These were “nonutilitarian delights” — this was art, he said — nature playing “a game of intricate enchantment and deception.” The French philosopher Roger Caillois took a darker view. Six things you might not have known about photographer Cindy Sherman’s work.
As the American photographer’s retrospective opens in London, we speak to curator Paul Moorhouse about the elusive artist and her extensive oeuvre In 2011, a print of a photograph by Cindy Sherman sold at a New York auction for $3.89 million.
Shot in 1981 as an Artforum magazine commission, “Untitled #96” was the most expensive photograph ever sold at the time. But the American photographer’s images were not always so popular. Back in the 80s, a lot of her commissioned work (including the Artforum three-million-dollar-photograph) was never published for fear that people would not understand it. Ambiguity – the quality of having more than one possible meaning and therefore causing uncertainty – is central to Sherman’s work.
“In foregrounding artifice, her work poses questions about the veracity of images... such questions have never been more relevant” – Paul Moorhouse “‘Untitled Film Still #21’ belongs to the series that really commenced Sherman’s mature work. “The work is ambiguous. Why Photographer Cindy Sherman Is Still the Queen of Reinvention. SMITHSONIANMAG.COM | Oct. 16, 2020, 7 a.m.
Cindy Sherman. Cindy Sherman (American, b. 1954) is widely recognized as one of the most important and influential artists in contemporary art.
